Monday, August 06, 2007

Discovery's Chapman Backs Iraq War

It's finally happened. The creationists, of the intelligent design variety, have finally, conclusively demonstrated that whatever grip they may once have had on reality has finally slipped away.

I know. I know. Many of you are asking what I'm talking about. What grip on reality? How can anyone who:

professes to believe dinosaurs were on the Ark,

or that Mt. Rushmore is conclusive proof of design in nature,

or that anybody might still be fooled into believing that intelligent design is science and not far-right, fundamentalist nonsense,

ever have been thought to have even the most tenuous grip on reality?

How, you are asking, could the motley rabble of HIV, Holocaust, and global warming deniers who populate the the intelligent design advocacy movement possibly separate themselves from the ranks of the sane more than they already have.

Only by coming out, as Discovery's Bruce Chapman now has, for continuing the war in Iraq.

Rest assured, Chapman hasn't volunteered to serve in Iraq himself. None of the chicken hawks is that crazy. But he does say, in a Seattle Timesopinion piece, that "[w]ithdrawal now is really a euphemism for surrender." Those who recommend getting out of Iraq, Chapman suggests, are doing the terrorists work for them.

Even Chapman, reality-challenged as he is, can't quite bring himself to recall Dubbya's WMD as the reason for the invasion, but he's all over the Al Quaida angle. And, as you might expect, you'll hear precious little about the civil war raging between Shiitte and Sunni and nothing at all about what our soldiers might do to stop it.

As the the intelligent design project has foundered in the wake of the Dover ruling, the Discovery institute and intelligent design advocates such as William Dembski have adopted a series of political positions, such as opposition to addressing the issue of global warming, that reveal their movement for what it is.

The old notion that ID was a movement of dissident scientists and intellectuals has been abandoned by the ID theorists themselves as they abandon the center they once sought to win and bind themselves tighter to their far-right, fundamentalist religious base.

ID advocates' late embrace of the Iraq war, now that the vast majority of the American people have made it plain they're unwilling to sacrifice more young soldiers simply to save the president from admitting that he was wrong, is at once an undeniable demonstration of the political nature of the ID movement and a sign of just how narrow the base of support for the war has become.

Events Calendar

Today's YouTube Video

Joan Bokaer of Theocracy Watch describes the rise of Dominionism in the U.S. government. Bokaer explains how the Religious Right took over the Republican Party, and how President Bush, along with his Religious Right allies in Congress, are attempting to transform the United States into a Christian nation.